These little piggies are making Ontario wildlife officials nervous. If wild pigs — defined as “any pig that is not contained or under the physical control of any person or is otherwise roaming freely” — were to establish themselves in the province, it would be an “ecological train wreck,” according to government officials. These porcine pests have already caused significant damage to the natural environment and crops on the Prairies: they’re smart and mobile, they eat anything, and they can be aggressive. That’s why the Ontario government has drafted a strategy to nip this in the bud — and to list them as an invasive species. That’ll do, pig.

From Genghis Khan to polar bears

Technology used to seek the Mongolian emperor’s final resting place has been repurposed to aid in polar bear research. Synthetic-aperture radar — a specialized kind of high-resolution, remote-sensing radar — is being tested to see whether it can detect polar bear dens. In trials in Utah (where there are no polar bears), Brigham Young University students crawled into mock dens under the snow to see whether the SAR device, fitted to a plane that flew 900 metres above, would detect them through the snow. So far, testing looks positive. The next step will be to test on real polar bear dens.

Sex-sorted sperm: sorted

Researchers from the University of Saskatchewan and the Toronto Zoo have successfully impregnated a female wood bison with sex-sorted sperm. To do this, they teamed up with Texas-based STgenetics to isolate sperm that carried the X chromosome (if you remember from biology class, females have two X chromosomes, while males have an X and a Y). A female wood bison was then artificially inseminated with the sorted sperm — 30 days later, the team was able to confirm that the female was expecting a baby girl. Conservationists hope that boosting the number of females will help increase the overall population.

Ocean commotion